Kroenke calls for Arsenal to be ‘honest’ about current situation

Josh Kroenke has called on Arsenal to be ‘honest’ about the situation they currently find themselves in, pushing the club to break a decade-long tradition of claiming everything is just fine.

“We have a saying over at Arsenal, victory through harmony. I think that victory through harmony can take a lot of different meanings, but for me victory through harmony comes from communication,” Kroenke said on the Woj Pod podcast last week.

“You got to have open and honest dialogue about the reality that we are on because if we are sugar coating anything about ourselves, about our team, about our direction, we’re only kidding ourselves and we’re only going to be worse off for it in the long run.”

Arsene Wenger is the biggest culprit of this way of thinking and it’s not hard to understand why. The manager always tries to find the positive in every situation but this can make him seem blinkered or blind.

The way Wenger reacts to defeats, for instance, is one example. It was only when Arsenal lost a series of games in a row did Wenger reference a ‘bad week’ but he still spoke as if the previous seven months had been smooth sailing. He does that a lot – treats defeats in isolation without a view to the larger picture.

But Ivan Gazidis is not blameless here either. He spent years telling fans the move to the Emirates wouldn’t affect the club’s ability to enter the transfer market only to change his tune entirely when funds were finally freed up for the manager.

I don’t expect Arsenal to open themselves to fans like a flower blooming in spring. It would, however, be nice if they could at least find a way to be honest with themselves.